Set-CsPublicProvider

Modifies a public provider currently configured for use in your organization. A public provider is an organization that provides instant messaging (IM), presence, and related services to the general public. Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ships with three public providers configured but not enabled: Yahoo!; AOL; and MSN.

Federation is a means by which two organizations can set up a trust relationship that facilitates communication between the two groups. When federation has been established, users in the two organizations can send each other instant messages, subscribe for presence notifications, and otherwise communicate with one another using SIP applications such as Microsoft Lync 2010. Lync Server 2010 allows for three types of federation: 1) direct federation between your organization and another; 2) federation between your organization and a public provider; and, 3) federation between your organization and a third-party hosting provider.

A public provider is an organization which provides SIP communication services for the general public. When you establish a federation relationship with a public provider, you effectively establish federation with any user who has an account hosted by that provider. For example, if you federate with MSN, then (depending on how you have configured your system) your users will be able to exchange instant messages and presence information with anyone who have an MSN instant messaging account.

In order to federate with a public provider you will need to create and enable a new public provider. (In addition, the public provider will need to create a federation relationship with you.) Lync Server includes three public providers - Yahoo!; AOL; and MSN - that are preconfigured for you. As additional public providers become available, you can create federation relationships with these new providers by using the New-CsPublicProvider cmdlet. After federated relationships have been established, you can then use the Set-CsPublicProvider to modify two important property values -- Enabled and VerificationLevel -- of these relationships.

Who can run this cmdlet: By default, members of the following groups are authorized to run the Set-CsPublicProvider cmdlet locally: RTCUniversalServerAdmins. To return a list of all the role-based access control (RBAC) roles this cmdlet has been assigned to (including any custom RBAC roles you have created yourself), run the following command from the Windows PowerShell prompt:

Unique identifier for the public provider to be modified. The Identity is typically the name of the website providing the services (for example, Yahoo!; AOL; MSN; etc.).

Instance

Optional

DisplayPublicProvider object

Allows you to pass a reference to an object to the cmdlet rather than set individual parameter values.

Enabled

Optional

Switch Parameter

Indicates whether or not the federation relationship between your organization and the public provider is active. If set to True, users in your organization will be able to exchange instant messages and presence information with users who have accounts hosted on the public provider. If set to False, users in your organization will not be able to exchange instant messages and presence information with users who have accounts hosted on the public provider.

VerificationLevel

Optional

String

Indicates how (or if) messages sent from a public provider are verified to ensure that they were sent from that provider. The VerificationLevel must be set to one of the following values:

AlwaysVerifiable. All messages purportedly sent from this provider will be accepted. If a verification header is not found in the message it will be added by Lync Server 2010. This is the default value.

AlwaysUnverifiable. All messages purportedly sent from a public provider are considered unverified. They will be delivered only if they were sent from a person who is on the recipient’s Contacts list. For example, if Ken Myer is on your Contacts list you will be able to receive messages from him. If Pilar Ackerman is not on your Contacts list then you will not be able to receive messages from her.

UseSourceVerification. Uses the verification header added to the message by the public provider. If the verification information is missing the message will be rejected.

Force

Optional

Switch Parameter

Suppresses any confirmation prompts or non-fatal error messages that might occur when you run the cmdlet.

WhatIf

Optional

Switch Parameter

Describes what would happen if you executed the command without actually executing the command.

In Example 2, the verification level is modified for all the public providers currently in use in the organization. To do this, the command first calls Get-CsPublicProvider without any parameters in order to return a collection of all the public providers currently configured for use. This collection is then piped to Set-CsPublicProvider, which takes each provider in the collection and changes the value of the VerificationLevel property to UseSourceVerification.

The command shown in Example 3 modifies the verification level for any public provider where that level is currently set to AlwaysVerifiable. To accomplish this task, the command first calls Get-CsPublicProvider in order to return a collection of all the public providers configured for use in the organization. This collection is then piped to the Where-Object cmdlet, which picks out only those providers where the VerificationLevel property is equal to AlwaysVerifiable. In turn, this filtered collection is piped to Set-CsPublicProvider, which changes the VerificationLevel for each provider in the collection to UseSourceVerification.